Controlling and Measuring Impedance in Variable Stiffness Actuators for Robotics

In the talk, I will review some of the background, motivations and stateof the art for the design of variable impedance actuators for robotics.I will then introduce the problem of controlling these actuators, bothin open loop - i.e. planning, possibly in an optimal way, their motionsand stiffness trajectories - and closed loop. The problem of measuringstiffness will be hence considered, and several recently introducedtechniques to identify or estimate impedance will be reviewed andexplained.